1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus configured to extract a plurality of feature amounts from image data and to input the feature amounts to a discriminator to discriminate the feature of the image data.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, a discrimination processing technology is used for selectively detecting only a specific region from image data, e.g., the face detection or the lesion detection in a medical image.
With the technology, a plurality of feature amounts is acquired by combining a plurality of filters that can emphasize a partial region of an image, such as maximum/minimum filters or Wavelet, for a plurality of learning images. Further, a discriminator is trained by applying the acquired plurality of feature amounts to a predetermined learning algorithm. Herein, the discriminator indicates a series of calculation methods for inputting data on a plurality of feature amounts by a plurality of filters to be applied to an unknown image, and outputting a discrimination result. The learning algorithm can be AdaBoost or Support Vector Machine (SVM).
Upon generating the discriminator for discrimination processing, the selection of the feature amount as an input is important because the input in the learning step greatly contributes to generalization capability, i.e., discrimination precision of the discriminator. In addition, processing for applying a filter to an image mainly shares the time required for the discrimination processing. In particular, the discrimination with proper allowable precision is necessary in practical use, thus the selection of the filter, i.e., the selection of the feature amount is particularly important.
Upon selecting data on the feature amount used for the discriminator, the processing for applying the filter to the image can be duplicated. For example, filters A and B extract one feature amount X and the filters A and B and a filter D extract another feature amount Y. The processing using the filters A and B is duplicative, the duplication is not however considered, and a calculation time of the generated discriminator is not thus precisely evaluated.